Lose to Win
by Frances Lyon
Summary: People are not born with a bitter disposition; they acquire it. And Paine has an aura that just reeks of a mysterious, dark past. It’s time to explore that past…
1. Ch 1: Unwelcome Guest

Author's Note: Since this is my first chapter It's only a few paragraphs. I promise longer one's in the future. Enjoy, and please R&R.

Two eyelids slide open, revealing a pair of eyes glazed in a pale red. Muscles slowly glide into animation, awaking from a dormant state. The morning light scrapes across Paine's unaccustomed pupils like nails on a chalkboard, causing them to retreat into dilation. Her body wakes up the same way it does everything else: with a somber dignity.

Gradually Paine makes her way to the bathroom connected to her quaint room on the Celsius. The sink handle turns with her wrist and water spills from the faucet. Hands cupped, she splashes water up onto her face and stares into the mirror. Her mother's eyes stare back. She sees them every day, and can never forget. Her father's stubborn chin is set into her jaw. She is a living testament of her family's notable features. She is theirs.

Paine retreats back into her bedroom and begins strapping on her leather garments, an arduous task that involves several buckles and spikes.

From the depths of her mangled sheets a groan emerges. The linen begins to shift slightly and Paine is suddenly aware that she's not alone. She quickly scans her memory for the previous night's events, but can remember nothing. Who was she with?

"Hey, Dr. P, hand me my boxers, would ya?" A voice slurred from a good night's sleep and muffled by pillows pleads with Paine, who falls backward into her dresser as though the voice had the force of a foghorn. She is suddenly vulnerable, and horrified to be in such a state.

"G-get out…" she breathed, her heart choking on air.


	2. Ch 2: The Past Creeps Back

Gippal cringed at Paine's look of disgust. He could tell she didn't remember. Her eyes were frantic. In what seemed like one fluid movement Gippal found himself on the other side of Paine's bedroom door wearing nothing but his under garments. She slammed it hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and had every intention of doing so.

"Hey! C'mon now, Dr. P! This isn't fair," Gippal tried to reason with the stone-faced metal door. It would not budge, and neither would Paine. Sucking in a deep breath he sighed and resigned himself to the truth.

"…Look, Paine, I know this looks bad—"

"You're damn right it looks bad!" Paine was blushing furiously. This was not something she would do in public, however, for it would break her placid, sarcastic image. Had they both been naked? What kind of nocturnal nastiness had they been up to?

"Give me a chance to explain, would ya? Jeese!" Gippal was slowly losing his patience. "I… I got a little lonely last night. Decided to visit you. You opened the door yourself. It's obvious now that you were half asleep and too drowsy to remember, though."

A stubborn silence radiated from the door. This was the most she had spoken to him since he and Baralai had joined The Gullwing's quest for an ancient site filled with valuable, undiscovered ruins that they had caught word of. It was untouched, they said. It held important information on Spira's history, they said. A goldmine of machina, they said. But 'they' said a lot of things.

"Can I at least get my pants back?"

"Did anything happen?" Paine snapped.

"Like what?" Gippal played the innocent card. Paine knew this little charade well.

"Cut the crap, Gippal. Did we do anything?"

Gippal slumped in defeat. "No. No, Paine, nothing happened." The door cracked open revealing Paine's sharp, narrowed eyes and furrowed brow. An icy glare made him stumble back a few steps before he regained his composure, and what little dignity a man half-naked in public can have. "Now can I please come back in? Please?" He smiled cunningly. He liked her, maybe more than he should. He liked the quiet, reserved type. And she was sharp as a razor. The whole package was enticing but untouchable, and he had resigned to leaving it untouched. But he would be damned if he didn't play with it.

Paine sighed, letting down her guard, but not too much. She wouldn't let him in again. She had learned her lesson once before. She turned on her heel and receded back into the room, letting the door swing open loosely. Gippal advanced and grabbed his discarded pants from the ground before anything could separate him from them.

All in all, Paine mused, he wasn't bad looking. He was handsome, in fact. His eye patch made him dashing, and his blonde spikes made him wild. Gippal's skin was a deep wooden color, like lacquered oak. Paine knew every inch of that skin. She learned its scars and soft spots, its curves and slopes where his bones were knitted together. She studied him extensively when they had first met back in her foolhardy days. She learned a lot that very same year, as fate would have it. Mainly she learned to sublimate any sexual urges to her fighting techniques and abilities.

Gippal's askew smile could melt hearts. Paine was once one of those hearts; she was just another casualty. Now, her heart stayed firm and grounded where others were imbued with his fantasies. Paine leaned against her dresser, arms crossed as Gippal laced up his boots. A heavy silence hung and threatened to spill forth in a deluge of unspoken words and profanities. They stayed dammed up tightly in Paine's cheek, where she bit back the urge to allow them freedom.

For a moment, Paine was lost in thought. It was a moment too long, and gave Gippal the upper hand. He moved across the room quickly and leaned up against the dresser, pressing up against Paine and crossing into her personal space. She snapped back to attention and gave him a cold, hard stare.

Leaning in close, he whispered in her ear. "Don't you ever miss it?" His breath was baited and warm, sending unwelcome chill bumps up her spine as he attempted to debauch her unwary mind. He lingered just close enough to her that she could feel his body heat; a not-so-subtle tease.

_... She lay clutching her torso, panicking. There was so much blood. It was everywhere. And it was hers, all of it. She felt her stomach clench and relieve itself of its contents, the likes of which she vomited in the toilet. Her hair wilted into her eyes and stuck to her dampened forehead, wet from sweat. The ceramic tiles were cold and unfriendly, and she was alone..._

"… C'mon, Dr, P. I miss you sometimes, ya know?" Hands crept there way towards her hips. He meant it. She knew he missed her. But what had once thrived between them now lay crumpled into abeyance.

"You are one of my closest friends," Paine said. It was all she would allow. It was all that could have been said.

There was a hiss of a quick intake of breath and Gippal, disappointed, backed away. Paine watched him go without moving an inch. She winced as the door swung shut and waited for the tension in the air to go slack. Somewhere inside her, a subtle longing wilted in despair as she battled it off. Not again. She wouldn't allow herself to be sucked into such a trite situation. Paine wasn't about to get mixed up in any stupid love stories. It just wasn't her game.

"Gullvings!" Brother's thick accent came over the intercom, "rheeport to brhidge!"

Paine's heels clanked against the metal corridor floors and slowly died away into the distance.


	3. Ch 3: Untouched Ruins

Tall white cumulous clouds were bathed in a buttery sunlight that slid in strong beams across each billowy pearl surface as they raced by the red exterior of the Celsius. Cerulean flames spilled from the rear and melted into the clear blue sky. Baralai, with his deep earthly skin and heavenly white hair, stood beneath the arch where the metallic interior met the glass cockpit. His mind was boring straight through the scene sprawling before him and burying itself deep in thought. Arms crossed and knees locked he waited anxiously. The sound of metal sliding against metal grounded his wandering ruminations and he turned, his eyes filled with a hopeful, expectant gleam.

Yuna and Paine stepped into the bridge and the door quickly slid shut behind them. Yuna, concluding her conversation with Paine, called out for Brother and started towards him, inquiring for the reason the Gullwings had been summoned. Paine, however, stayed on the stairwell and leaned against her locked elbows. She didn't notice Baralai approach, and was startled slightly when he addressed her.

"Good morning," he gushed inside, trying to hide his eagerness. "How was your night?"

"It was... interrupted," Paine replied dryly.

"What do you mea-?"

The door gliding away once more revealing Gippal cut off Baralai in mid sentence. Gippal had a way of illuminating a room with his presence, as though everything gravitated towards him somehow. Baralai ached ambivalently with a mix of jealousy and anger towards himself for having such disgruntled feelings for a friend. It was this conflict that kept him awake at night.

Gippal eyed Paine's back, taking in her semi-clad skin. The contours of her spine sloped smoothly with her curved figure and dripped down to form delicate but powerful, sculpted legs. Gippal smiled.

"Good morning all! Where are we today?"

"It seems we're nearing the ruins of an unnamed, unmapped and uncharted lost city," Shinra blurted out helpfully, mist forming at the mouth of his mask.

"Then how did we find out about it?" Yuna asked the world at large.

"Easy. I did an advanced surveillance of all of Spira via comsphere, mapping the topography. There are many islands this far south that have yet to be discovered. Most of them were left alone due to either religious superstition or lack of transportation to these regions. Also, the feuds on Spira have taken everyone's attention away from further exploration. Over the years, all knowledge of these untrodden landscapes have been lost." Shinra basked smugly in the uncertain look that pinballed from face to face as the others tried to make sense of his superior knowledge.

"So why are we going there?" A new voice piped up. Unnoticed, Rikku had entered the room. She hopped excitedly from foot to foot. "Is there treasure? Or Spheres?" Her voice curled into an enthusiastic squeal.

"To be honest," Buddy took center stage now "we don't really know. Gippal seems to have heard that there were precious machina created by some superior race or something. Baralai says that he and Nooj discovered some highly important information about Spira's past," Baralai nodded on behalf of the absent Nooj and himself. "And well… we've also heard that it's a gold-mine just waiting to be tapped into."

"So it could be anything," Rikku giggled in childish wonderment.

"Ve whill triumph, no matter what!" Brother launched into a premature victory dance.

"That's all you people think we're going to find?" Shinra asked, dumfounded. "You think some booty, old machina and history books is why I've taken it upon myself to research these lost islands? You're sadly mistaken."

"Then what, Shinra," Yuna asked patiently.

"Fools! You don't know anything about the spheres?" Shinra sighed. "I suppose it would be too much to ask that you all did your homework on this particular mission, huh? Well, anyways, supposedly a race long since extinct could harness the true power of the spheres, a power that we can only imagine. Our ancestors called the race the 'Memphilatus.' That is the only piece of information that has survived: the name of these beings and that they may have existed. Everything else is merely speculation or old wives' tales. It was I who tracked down the ruins' location to be examined by our team."

"How do you know that the ruins belonged to the Mem-… Memfi… those guys," Rikku stuttered with her pronunciation.

A long, thick silence hung in the air.

"… I'm just a kid," Shinra drew this ultimatum and turned back to his station.

"What… what day is it?" A voice that had henceforth remained unheard finally spoke up. Paine had an unusually worried expression on her face. Gippal seemed to absorb this anxiety and suddenly appeared empathetic towards her, which confused Baralai. Was there something he didn't know?

"It's the 17th of the Autmunal Season," Shinra, back still turned on the others, piped up with the date. "The second moon of this month, I believe."

A wave of nausea seemed to crash against the shore that was Paine's face. She momentarily looked ill, but steadied herself when she became aware of her friend's worried expressions.

"I was just curious," she said unconvincingly. "Call me when we land. I'll be in my roo-"

"We're heeeeyer!" Brother yelled. Everyone turned and watched the clouds disintegrate to reveal a heavily forested landscape.


	4. Ch 4: Never Seen Her Cry

A/N: Another installment of this little project I'm working on. Please enjoy, and don't assume. I promise there's a twist...

Lyon

After a painstaking job of hacking through the thick hedges, Gippal, Paine, Yuna, Rikku, Baralai and Shinra found themselves at the mouth of what appeared to be a giant pile of rubble. Broken pillars and dilapidated walls surrounded the entrance. Pyreflies swarmed and danced in the air, gliding playfully in gentle loops.

Once inside, the six found that the ruins were larger and had more catacombs than they had anticipated. Six paths lay before them, each one as deeply unnerving as the next.

"All right," Yuna took the reins; "You've all got your light-nets, right?" The group nodded and each individual held up an illuminated handheld staff in turn. "Good. Everyone, choose a direction. We'll stay connected with the comsets. Shinra, you come with me."

Inside the depths of his heavily layered apparel, Shinra blushed. He had a crush on Yuna, but then again so did Brother. Both of them were shadowed, however, by Tidus. Had it not been Blitzball Season, Tidus would have been with them now. Shinra took Yuna's hand and the two of them headed down a northeastern hallway.

A spherical grid of light appeared at the tip of the previously mentioned handheld staff and Yuna raised the illuminated ball of light aloft.

After watching the glow of Yuna's light-net fade into the tenebrous corridor, the group eyed one another dumbly and dispatched one by one into the catacombs. Paine headed down a hallway facing east, and noticed in her peripheral vision that Gippal started down the second eastern hallway.

Baralai was the last to leave. He wanted to take an eastern route, so as to stay close to Paine, but the only one uninhabited by his comrades was headed west. With a resentful glance down Gippal's passageway, he marched down the empty hall.

Paine found herself buried deep beneath the surface, trailing through the winding catacombs. Her footsteps were muffled by ages of dust and grime and did not echo as expected, but were instead absorbed by the crusted cinder block walls. The hallway was damp and humid with the putrid scent of decay lingering on the air.

At last reaching one of the long corridors' ends, Paine struggled to dislodge a large creaking wooden door that had jammed itself shut; its hinges were overflowing with rust. The door came down and stirred the dust into an uproar as it fell to the floor with a well-placed kick from Paine. Sword drawn, she stepped cautiously into the dimly lit room. The ceiling was speckled with variously sized holes that shed a little light on the situation and proved to Paine that she had emerged onto a surface-level room.

… She had lowered herself onto the ground carefully, trying to keep her eyelids from betraying her to the loss of blood. They wanted so desperately to slide shut, and her whole body was screaming in revolt against her physical movements. She was losing too much blood…

Paine shook off a tarnished memory that resurfaced momentarily. No matter how hard she tried, however, the date seemed to puncture her thought process and display itself boldly like a neon sign. She could not forget.

After coming to the conclusion that she was indeed alone, Paine began to inspect the large and extravagantly furnished old room. It was, without a doubt, a library. Paine slunk over to one of the many lacquered wooden shelves and inspected it. She read the bookbinding's by the glow of a thin beam of light from a hole in the ceiling, which was freckled by flecks of dust that sparkled in the midday sun. Her index finger grazed the spines of books lined along the shelf and she murmured each title in an undertone. Each name was foreign and spoke of an ancient civilization long forgotten to Spira.

A whisper of movement swept through the darkness; Paine caught it only out of the corner of her eye. Her muscles tensed and she swung her sword in the direction from which the movement had come. A bookshelf splintered and ancient books flew into the air in a whir of dust and paper. Pages drifted to the ground, the dust settling on top of them. She stood her ground, waiting for something to rear its head. Nothing came.

… Perhaps she was being paranoid? But then again you could never tell in a place this old. Anything could be lurking around here.

Paine climbed the mountain of rubble she had created, carefully avoiding the large shards of wood standing vertically. Something amidst the pile stirred and Paine brought her sword down in its general direction without a second thought. In doing so, however, she tripped into a small hole created by the uneven books and lost her balance. She stumbled forward to the flat ground clumsily, hardly noticing her thick leather shorts and belt snagging on a metal beam that had been holding the corners of the bookshelf to the floor. It protruded sharply from the ground and threatened to impale an unwary passerby.

Steadying herself, Paine's hand found it's way down towards the severed leather belt and the rip in her uniform. She groped at the strap in an attempt to keep it from falling down, but to no avail. It slid down her hips and pulled at the tear in her leather shorts, causing the rip to spread. It revealed her structured hipbone and a thumbprint sized scar residing almost on the center of her abdomen.

Upon seeing it, Paine froze. Her fingers lightly grazed the fleshy mound of scar tissue. A knot tied itself in her throat and suffocated the butterflies of uncertainty in her stomach. Her legs gave way to the sudden increase of gravity on her shoulders, and her eyes damned up the deluge of tears that wanted to break free. On her hands and knees, she shook uncontrollably.

…_It shouldn't have happened like this… _

"Paine…?"

Paine's head jerked upwards and she scrambled to get to her feet. Gippal, standing in one of the many doorways, stared at the prone woman before him, his eye wide with concern. He stepped closer and tried to aid her in getting to her feet, but she openly refused his help by shoving him away. She tossed back her now frazzled hair, glaring at him.

"Stay away," she hissed and cringed as his expression of empathy deepened. Paine propped herself up on her sword, only to fall to her knees again. Years of repressed anger and pain swelled up and threatened to burst inside her. She hadn't cried over it, not even the night it happened…

Refusing to submit to her hostility, Gippal pushed forward and caught her by the shoulders. He wrapped his arm around her back and with the other held her shoulder, supporting her on her feet.

"You couldn't have done anything…" he whispered. Paine glanced up at him for a moment before burying her face in his chest. Her hand shot instinctively to her mouth and tried to prevent her sobs from escaping, but it was too late. Paine's sorrow escaped in primal tears that echoed from some ache left untouched for years. The two fell to the floor, Gippal holding her close.

He was worried about her. He always was around this time of year. But he had never seen her this distraught. Come to think of it, he had never seen her cry, either.


End file.
